Unpaid Work Placements

With so much talk in the press about Unpaid Work Experience  it highlights the stark difference to the European system where an unpaid placement or internship is seen as an integral part of the education and transition to work process and is often included as an important part of qualifications, including apprenticeships.

Most European students will need to carry out a placement in another country during their education as this is seen as a vital part of their qualification, giving confidence, independence, real world work and of course another language. In the UK we seem to undervalue the benefits of speaking to someone in another country in their own language – even if it is just a friendly salutation. The Leonardo mobility programmes set to provide a funding source to facilitate these mobility’s around Europe.

The Training Partnership Ltd was set up some 16 years ago to help provide such work experiences to EU students wishing to travel to South Devon, carry out an unpaid placement at some of our fantastic local businesses and often have a period of language training to enhance their already useful level of English. There have, in the intervening years, been many hundreds of students who have visited the Bay (well over 700 in 2011), studied here and enjoyed a placement with a local employer. The benefits of this are many fold; as an employer you have a motivated, career minded young person with a great range of skills, often up to graduate level, with a strong desire to speak and understand English: for the student, a life altering experience. These are not students who want to come here and ‘take local jobs’, they are required to return home as part of the funding, their driving force is having a CV that will lift them above the average, make them employable, help them ‘grow’ and of course be fluent in English. There is no doubt that by offering a placement you will change peoples lives, the other side to that is in return they may change the life of your business, your employees and of course, you.

Are these students exploited or used as unpaid labour? Not at all, they are usually funded via one of the EU mobility programmes (Leonardo Da Vinci and Erasmus being the most common), are provided with Host Family accommodation, have their flights and transfers paid, often given a bus pass to enable them to travel more easily and a 24 hour support system provided by The Training Partnership. If this is not the case they can be sponsored by their employers to travel and gain valuable experience that will benefit them on their return home, in some cases we have had students who have ‘self funded’ such is the desire to achieve fluency in English.